Tag Archives: literature

A gloss

10 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in Latin Classics, Linguistics

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

It’s funny sometimes how Latin terms are glossed. Consider Sallust, Catilinae Coniuratio 55.5;

in eum locum postquam demissus est Lentulus, vindices rerum capitalium, quibus praeceptum erat, laqueo gulam fregere

This is typically translated as something like the following:

When Lentulus had been let down into this place, executioners, to whom orders had been given, strangled him with a cord.

The translation above is almost exactly the one on Perseus, which is the 1899 English translation by J.S. Watson. But he has glossed “executioners” above as “certain men”.

But even then, the word “executioners” is a certain type of gloss. The Latin in question is vindices rerum capitalium, which is far more literally something like “the revengers of the capital matters”, or perhaps more favorably but still rather cryptic (although no more cryptic than “certain men”): “capital revengers”. Anyway this is where we get the idea of “capital punishment” or “capital crimes” from.

A strange turn of phrase, perhaps, but how exactly did Lentulus (and Cethegus, Statilius, and others too) die at the illegal order of Cicero? Is that “strangled with a cord”? Well, yes, but … no. In fact it’s far more brutal than that!

The Latin words for the method of execution are laqueo gulam fregere. Laqueo is ablative laqueus, meaning noose, snare, etc, lets say “by a noose”. Gulam is straightforward: it’s accusative gula – the throat or neck. Now that’s leaves the verb, fregere. Oh yes, perhaps “strangled”, but not exactly: there’s some typical archaising going on here by Sallust that’s altered the form of the verb somewhat, it’s really frango frangere fregi fractum … and look at that supine, fractum, which is were we ultimately derives the word “fracture”. And indeed frango means more like “break”, “crush”, “grind”, “bruise” and also by transference, “violate”, “subdue”, “soften”, and “weaken”. Lentulus is having his throat violated. This being ancient Rome, it’s not a noose breaking the neck as in a 19th century long-drop hanging: it’s a rather brutal garrotting, pure and simple.

So sure, while it might be fine to think that “certain men … strangled him with a cord”, but that makes it sound rather more pleasant a death than the way it surely was (and Sallust had just finished describing just how disgusting in darkness, filth, and smell, the dungeon where the execution took place, actually was). Therefore I think it’s far more fitting to think that in the dark and fetid pit of the Tullianum, that “the capital revengers … crushed his throat with a noose”.

New York, New York, July

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Latin Classics, Personal, Roman History

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

This July I’m very excited to be in New York, at Columbia University, 9th to 11th July for the 27th Annual Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar.[1] The theme is ‘The Journey in Roman Literature’. I’m giving a 30 minute paper, provisionally scheduled for 9.30am Wednesday morning, titled ‘Hannibal’s Alpine Journey and the Wasteland of Italy in Livy Books XXI and XXII’ … The abstract is:

Hannibal’s journey across the Alps to attack the Romans in Italy is one of the most celebrated and famous events of Roman history. This paper deals with one of major accounts of this event, and its aftermath: the story of the crossing in Livy’s book 21, and the battles which follow it at the River Trebia and Lake Trasimene. In particular, the paper will highlight a number of connections in Livy that are found between the personality of Hannibal, the events of the Alpine journey, and Livy’s representation of the Italian landscape. The paper will argue that, starting with the divine vision of the ‘wasteland of Italy’ that was granted to Hannibal at 21.22.6–9, Livy’s depiction of Hannibal, and his journey across the Alps, have strong correspondences in the way the landscape of Italy was rendered in Livy’s literary scheme. It will show that the manner in which Hannibal inflicted defeat on the Romans, is intimately tied, in a very literary way, to both the representation of the alpine crossing and the content of Hannibal’s dream that precedes it. Although the annihilation of the Roman army at Cannae is the military highpoint of Hannibal’s career, this paper will demonstrate that it is the battle of Lake Trasimene, with its rich tapestry of omens, prodigies, weather, terrain and an earthquake mid-battle, that marks the centrepiece of Livy’s representation and the crescendo of Hannibal’s journey through Italy.

There’s lots of other really good papers being presented over the three days, and the registration is really quite cheap, so if you’re on the USA Eastern seaboard in July this year or feel like a trip there, you should come along, say hello, hear my paper and a whole bunch of even better ones.

[1] No, I’ve got no idea why the Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar is in a city on the Atlantic Ocean either, but as it’s Manhattan I’m not complaining.

To write the thing is to conquer it

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Latin Classics, Roman History

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , ,

Cicero, de Provinciis Consularibus X.25, Piso doesn’t send letters, Gabinius sends them but they are damned, but Caesar’s letters (one presumes) earn him honours as altogether no other man:

vos enim, ad quos litteras L. Piso de suis rebus non audet mittere, qui Gabini litteras insigni quadam nota atque ignominia nova condemnastis, C. Caesari supplicationes decrevistis numero ut nemini uno ex bello, honore ut omnino nemini (Cic. Prov. X.25).

In fact you, to whom L. Piso does not dare to send letters concerning his affairs, you who condemned the letters of Gabinius, with a certain extraordinary censure, and novel dishonour, you voted supplications to C. Caesar, in number as no man, in one war honour as altogether no other.

Later, in XIII.33, we find that a region (Gaul) formerly not known through letters, not even through rumour (fama), has now been tramped all over by Caesar’s army:

… et quas regiones quasque gentis nullae nobis antea litterae, nulla vox, nulla fama notas fecerat, has hoster imperator nosterque exercitus et populi Romana arma peragrarunt. (Cic. Prov. XIII.33)

… and of those regions and those nations, no letters, no voice, no report had before made note to us, these were traversed over by our commander, our army, and by the arms of the Roman people.

And as we know, famously written on by the man himself:

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres … (Caesar, de Bello Gallico 1.1.1)

The whole of Gaul is divided into three parts …

Vergil’s fancy to the bees, and the heavenly elixir

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Academia, English Literature, Latin Classics, Reception

≈ Comments Off

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

esse apibus partem diuinae mentis et haustus | aetherios dixere — Vergil, Georgics 4.220-221

Just saw this quoted in Claire Preston, 2006, Bee London: Reaktion Books. Google tells me that Claire Preston is Professor of Early Modern English literature at the University of Birmingham. It’s quoted, in itself a quote, from 17th C. Italian writer. I really, really, want to like this book. I love Bees. I love this sort of scholarship (although this is not really a piece of serious scholarship, and for me, just light-hearted summer reading). It’s a really interesting book about Bees, their natural and social history,

However the book is full of quotes, from English translations, mostly Dryden, of Vergil, quoted by page number. Which is really, really sloppy, because it makes much of the translation’s meaning (bees keep shop, they live in a commonwealth, etc), when the translations can’t be necessarily trusted. But never mind, until I saw the above passage translated as:

It is said that bees share divine intelligence by drinking ethereal draughts.

I just can’t let it pass. Plainly, apibus is dative/ablative apis (“bee”), so it means “to/by/with/from bees”. diuinae mentis is genitive f. singular, so “of the divine mind” and partem is accusative, and forms both the object and forms part of the infinitive-accusative construction esse … dixere. So I think apibus is dative, so that leaves it as “to/from bees”. However I doubt that et haustus aetherios is the agent of partem diuinae mentis, because clearly the et is introducing a new clause, it’s an additional accusative object with an implicit verb like ‘[given] to the bees’, with aetherios a nominative an accusative plural adjective used as a substantive “… and drinking ethereal [elixirs]“, supposing that if you can be drinking anything ethereal, it would have to be an elixir of some sort. So I think something like, to be quite literal for the moment about the infinitives:

to be to the bees a share of the divine mind, and drinking ethereal [elixir], to have said.

But of course, infinitive-accusative, oratio obliqua, indirect speech, and esse with the dative can mean in the sense of ‘to belong’ or ‘to pertain to’, so naturally;

It is said that to the bees [belongs] a share of the divine mind, and drinking ethereal elixirs.

Curiously, Lewis and Short on Perseus gives esse as the present infinitive active also of edo, “to eat”, and the presence of haustus, “drinking” … really makes me wonder if the translation could be rendered along the lines of:

It is said that the bees eat of the divine mind, and drink ethereal elixirs.

There’s also a sense with aetherius can mean “heavenly” or “celestial”, not just “ethereal”, and in that sense it tickles my fancy much better in terms of its relation to “the divine mind”, so perhaps we could render it;

It is said that the bees eat the Mind of God, and drink of Heaven.

After all the part of Georgics here immediately after this expounds on how God permeates all existence:

deum namque ire per omnes | terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum — Vergil Georgics 4.221-222. (see here).

More prosaically, however, and bringing it back to earth for a moment, I’d say it most likely translates:

It is said that to the bees belongs a share of the divine mind, and the drinking of heavenly elixirs.

Digital Classics and the data of ineffable mystery

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Digital Classics, English Literature, Greek Classics, Latin Classics, Literature, Science & Tech, Software & Tools

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

I found that this article, by Stephen Marche titled Literature is not Data: Against Digital Humanities, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, was very thought provoking as far as polemic goes. Of course literature isn’t just mere “data”; but I also think that data about literature can still give you insight into it. One of the comments, by “mad scientist”, sums up the biggest problem with this critique when it says:

… simply to insist — again — on the ineffable mystery of literature isn’t particularly interesting.

Literature, like all art, does have an element of “ineffable mystery” but that’s not the only thing it has.

Anyway the entire polemic seems to me to be misplaced. It might be a new feeling for academics of English literature to be relying on databases and software tools but I suspect most modern Classicists simply couldn’t live without their Perseus or Brepolis access. Perhaps because Classicists are also nearly always Classical Historians and many of us have a close relationship with Archaeology and Archaeologists. Many of us Are Archeologists first and foremost (I’m not, however). Those of us trained in the Internet Age are completely normalised to the idea of databases and digital resources. Many of us have pocket Latin and Greek dictionaries in the form of smartphone applications.

But I think, in the Classical field, it goes to something deeper. Our field has always had an element of this: lonely scholars slaving over commentaries, compiling dictionaries or creating concordances. I certainly do not envy those who came before us and built up databases of texts with an index for every unique word stem used in it! That, to me sounds like such an amazingly stultifying job description, I’m glad I live in an age when all that prior hard word can be digitised and automated and made available for my daily use at the touch of a button!

But there’s also a great insight that I think is yet to be fully realised. For example, the creation and classifying of stemma codicum, so important to us in understanding how the literature has been transmitted to us through the ages, I think may be an area that will benefit from future computational insights. Another could be understanding the relationship of texts and authors; and the identification of insertions and errata another. These are things which were once done by hand, now the use of computers can speed them up and let scholars do the important work of humanist analysis and understanding rather than the mere donkey-work of collating word-frequency tables and transmission of stylistic markers in different works. Where the understanding of texts intersects with the understanding of history, the use of computational analysis, like that of definitive archaeological data before that, will also help us to sharpen our focus and broaden our horizons.

I for one welcome our new computer overlords.